We are in need of volunteers to help out with computer board game-Ouk. This is going to be running as a Java applet. This game has been put in sourceforge as GPL. A working demo can be found at ouk.sourceforge.net.

Any helps would be appreciated including testers, programmers, designers, or project managers. I’m willing to give quick demo for beginners in Java programming. Volunteer must like playing Ouk or International chess. The rule is just a little different between Ouk and chess. Any hardcore Yahoo chess gamer would be a big help to this project.

Maybe it’s good to mention that we are using resource from sourceforge such website and project code repository. CVS and subversion are available for versioning but currently using CVS. We use Eclipse 3.1 as an IDE and open to use NetBean 5 for future GUI design.

Thai didn’t still ouk from white men. Chess isn’t even a white men’s game. Its origin is in Asia. It’s asian’s game. Thai just like Cambodia adapted the game from other asian country. Neither of us started ouk. We just probably adapted before they did. We probably change the rule around too.

Pieces are not that similar, however, it’s a game of royalty, what do you expect? General go to war with Elephants and Boat in Asia, in Europe They had Knights and Bishops- pieces reflect different defense and national structure.

Arun, I chose Java because it is a full flex programming language and I used it before. It shouldn’t be that slow in the loading the java. It’s only 0.5mb total.

GuitarPikz, I probably don’t have such high hope. I just want it to be a useful for those who like Ouk can play it via the internet. In addition, I want to be able to establish the scoring and evaluation system for the AI part.

KampucheaKrom, you are very knowledgeable of the chess history. I’m certain that Khmer changes some of the rule that is why Ouk is pretty unique except Maruk of Thai which has the same rule. The queen (maiden) and bishop (guard) in Ouk have weaker moves than the Internal Chess. That probably reflected Khmer power structure. But I’ll let the historian worry about those kind of things. Now I just want to get the game to work with rule as documented and the AI to play in a medium rank. If anyone is good with Ouk, I really need your help.

Ouk has unique style but you don’t get the long moves like Internal chess. Many of the pieces move like the Internal chess. The biship and queen in Ouk can only move one space. The strongest piece is the castle. The pawns(fish) is setup one rank(row) higher.

You can try out the game at http://ouk.sourceforge.net/ against the computer. When you select a piece it hightlights the possible moves. So it’s fairly easy to follow along. The rules are on that site. Again, this is far from a Beta version.

Thanks for the great suggestions. I’ll make the update when I get the chance.

One thing about the board is that Ouk board doesn’t have checker style pattern.

The AI is not that great yet but it should not give away piece with no reason. I have to check into that. The current algorithm is just for testing. It cannot look ahead more than 3 or 4 moves. The future algorithm should be able to look ahead about 6 to 8 moves within a reasonsable of time.